What it Comes Down To
by kaz456
Summary: The Animorphs deal with an important question and deeper underlying issue that were bound to come up sooner or later. One shot.


**Author's note: This is a topic that came to my mind when I was reading the work of another very talented author here on Thanks for taking the chance and reading this. I'd truly appreciate it if you would drop a review with some of your thoughts about it when you're done. **

**Oh, and ( ) denotes thoughtspeak; the line breaks denote...uh, line breaks. **

CASSIE'S POV

Maybe it shouldn't have affected me so much. Maybe it shouldn't have been such a big deal. But the problem was that it _did_ affect me, and it _was_ a big deal.

In fact, it became more than a big deal. It became something huge, overwhelming, and pressing. It became something that I couldn't stand to deal with but at the same time knew I had to confront.

It was first planted in my head the night that I babysat my neighbor's five-year-old daughter. It was one of those rare Saturday nights where we didn't have any Yeerk activity, and my neighbor had called me as a last resort because their baby-sitter had become sick. I could hear the desperation in her voice and it just ripped at my heart, so I agreed to fill in that night. And I figured that it would nice to have some extra money other than what my parents gave me. To be honest, though, I much rather would have spent the Saturday night at home, on the couch, watching one of the Animal Planet specials. But you can't always get what you want, I guess.

My neighbor's daughter's name was Katie, and she was the cutest and sweetest little girl I had ever known. When I came to the door the first thing she did was give me a hug, which immediately made me smile. I love little kids, especially ones that aren't afraid to show some affection to someone who's not related to them.

The night was going well. We had already played games, completed a puzzle, read a book, and even baked some cookies. Katie was getting ready to go to bed, and I was cleaning up the mess from the cookies.

Katie came into the kitchen and told me that she was ready to go to bed. It was actually past her bedtime, and the fact that she so willingly wanted to go made me adore her even more.

We were leaving the kitchen, when Katie suddenly stopped, pointed to a spot on the counter, and said, "Look! An ant!"

I turned around and smushed the little ant without a thought. It was Katie's next words that ignited what would soon turn into a fire.

"You killed it," She told me. "You killed the ant!" She was right. I had. But I didn't have time to dwell on what she said. Katie's parents would be home soon, and she needed to be in bed.

Katie's family was deeply religious, and before she went to bed each night one of them prayed with her. Naturally, when I was putting her to bed and tucking her in, she asked if I could pray with her. My family isn't very religious, but I wasn't about to deny a little girl's request. I gently told her sure, and bent down next to her to pray.

What startled me, though, was that at the end of her prayer, Katie added, "And please be with the family of the ant that Cassie killed."

She meant it genuinely, I knew. And I also knew that she had no hard feelings towards me, and that she was only worried about the poor little ant. But still, her words drove right through me.

After Katie went to sleep I came back downstairs. I finished cleaning the kitchen, tidied up the living room, and straightened up the all the little messes we had made. Then I sat down on the couch and waited for Katie's parents to come back home. And I pushed the thought out of my head that had been coming back to me ever since Katie had prayed those twelve words.

Katie's parents came back shortly. They paid and thanked me, and after returning the kind words and telling them what a good girl Katie had been, I walked back home.

I unlocked my back door and let myself in. My mom was sitting on the couch in the living room, which is positioned right next to the door. When I walked in she looked up and was visibly relieved.

"Hey, Mom. What's wrong?" I asked in response to the once-anxious expression on her face.

She laughed a little embarrassedly. "I can always count on you to know when something's wrong, Cassie. I guess I was just overreacting a little. I've been watching the news and they just now said that a murderer is on the loose not too far from here, and I just got a little worried about you. But don't worry, that's just a mother's instincts."

I smiled reassuringly at her. "I guess there will never be a time when you don't worry about me – even if I'm right next door."

She laughed a little again and I started the walk up to my room.

It wasn't until I was halfway up the stairs that I realized that what Katie and my mom had both said had to do with murdering and killing others. And I guess that's where the intensity stepped up a notch.

* * *

I read an article from a well-known professor that said that things may happen the same every day, but that it's only when we become aware of something that it really sticks out to us. In other words, it's not until you become aware of a certain kind of car that you want that you notice just how many other people around you have it, and it seems like everywhere you go you see it. 

I guess that's what happened to me. For the next week, it seemed that everywhere I went, everyone was talking about killing and murderers. From my parents, still going on about that murderer on the loose; to my teachers, talking in English class about books like _Murder in the Cathedral _and in History class about great assassinations and assassins; to radio stations, who were suddenly always playing songs with titles like _Killing Me Softly;_ to my friends, who all of a sudden seemed to be tossing out phrases like, "I'm _dying_ to go to the mall," and "Over my _dead _body," after every sentence.

The point is, everywhere I went it felt like I was being confronted by the same message, and it got to the point that I felt like if I didn't come out and say how I felt, then I was going to explode.

* * *

It was at one of our meetings that I finally decided to open my mouth. It wasn't a serious meeting. In fact, it seemed to me that Jake had just called it because he wanted us to be able to relax with each other, away from a fighting setting. 

We were in the barn. Marco was telling an amusing story about his math class, much to the chagrin of Rachel, who was in his math class, had been a witness to the event, and was convinced that it wasn't funny.

"So anyway, Mrs. G is all like, 'Marco, do you have something you want to share with the class?' and I'm just like, 'Why, yes, Mrs. G, I do.' So I go up to the front of the class and I – "

"Make a complete fool of yourself," Rachel finished for him.

Marco went on speaking like Rachel hadn't interrupted him. "And I start telling the class about the game last night. And Mrs. G is all –"

"Are we murderers?" I blurted out.

Everyone turned to stare at me. The entire light-hearted atmosphere had been broken by my question.

"What?" Jake asked. I knew that he had heard what I said, but I repeated it again anyways.

"Are we all murderers?"

There was silence in the room.

"What do you mean?" Jake asked slowly and carefully.

I rattled off the thought that had been swimming around in my head for the past week. "I mean, we fight this war and we think that we're doing the right thing and the thing that's good, but are we really murderers at heart?"

There was silence for a moment again, and then Tobias spoke up. (Technically, murdering is the unlawful killing of another human being, isn't it? So when we fight Yeerks, we're not really murdering. We're just killing.)

"Is there any real difference? They're both taking away the life of something, aren't they?" I asked.

"There's a huge difference," Rachel said. "We kill plants all the time by plucking them and by rooting them out to eat them. But that's not something wrong, is it? It's just the way things go. Just because I kill a spider – "

"Or an ant," I interjected.

"Or an ant," Rachel continued, "Doesn't mean that I'm a murderer."

"What about when you kill a Controller?" Jake spoke up for the first time. "Killing a controller is killing a human."

"Killing a Controller is killing a Yeerk," Rachel said. "Not killing a human."

"Sure, it's killing a Yeerk, but it's also killing a human," Marco countered. "What, does killing the Yeerk cancel out killing the human?" It was a rhetorical question, but it got the point across.

(If murdering is only the killing of the member of one's species, then as long as I am on Earth I will never be in the wrong for those whom I have killed, )Ax pointed out.

"In which case, why is murdering determined as the killing of another human being?" Jake asked. He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and waited for someone to answer.

"Because _we_ are human beings," Marco said. "The people who defined "murder" knew that it had to be a crime. But they also knew that every day we kill things like plants or spiders. So for all of them, it was okay to make murdering only the killing of other humans. But for us, it's not."

"Why not?" Rachel asked.

"Because everyday we turn into things like spiders – "

"Or ants," I added softly again.

"Or ants," Marco said, giving me a curious look, "so then every time that we, the Animorphs, kill a spider or ant, we're really murdering."

"No," Jake said. "Turning into something doesn't make you a part of that species. If that was true, then Ax would be part human."

"And Tobias would be part hawk," Rachel added.

"Which he is," Marco argued. "Being able to morph something has the ability to make you a part of it. Tobias is living proof."

"Marco's right, to an extent," I interrupted, before Rachel could open her mouth to start arguing with Marco. "Morphing into something does give you a special bond with it. But I don't think that it makes you part of that species."

"So then only us five are murderers, because Ax isn't killing an Andalite and we're killing humans?" Rachel asked skeptically.

(None of you are murderers, )Ax said. (We are each doing our duty, and killing human-controllers is simply a part of our duty.)

Jake shook his head. "You can justify something, but that still doesn't change the fact that you did it. We may be doing it because it's our duty or because it's the right thing to do, but that doesn't change the fact that we're doing it."

"Then how does that make us any different from the murderers on the street?" I asked. "When it comes down to it and we break away from the excuses and justifications, we're all murderers. How are we any different from Yeerks, or from your average murderer?"

No one had an answer. Finally, Tobias spoke up.

(We kill because we have to,) He said. (It may make some of us murderers or killers, but we don't do it just because. That has to count for something.)

Silence faded back into the room as everyone pondered that.

"If we are murderers, then we've been murderers since the beginning of this war. Why is it only bothering us now?" Marco said. He sounded desperate, as if he knew the truth was harsh but he was trying to soften it anyway.

"Because we're just now aware of it," I replied, and I thought back to the past week and how aware I had been.

"Maybe," Jake said quietly, then cleared his throat and spoke louder, looking each of us in the eye. "Maybe when this war is over, people will look at us and the Yeerks and they'll realize that in our actions, we were both exactly the same. But then they'll look deeper and they'll look at our intentions and they'll see just how different we are. So maybe what determines the difference between two murderers or two killers are the intentions."

"Maybe that's all we can hope for," Jake finished quietly. As I looked around the barn, I saw everyone's heads' slowly nod in agreement.

I went to sleep that night, fully aware that when it came down to it, I could be considered Cassie the killer or Cassie the murderer. But somehow, keeping in mind Jake's lasting words, I slept better that night than I had slept the entire week.

And for me, Cassie the girl, that was enough.


End file.
